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It is important as a business to understand the power of the internet as a marketing tool. While your business may be a small one it is important not just to rely on the advert you have had in the yellow pages or any similar publication for a number of years.

Having your own website is an important way to attract new business to your company and the quality of it is important as it may be the first impression a person gets of your business or service.

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Graphics & Buttons

It may be terribly tempting when a computer company demonstrates to you lots of fancy graphics and pretty enter buttons to be sold by that. However you need to consider the needs of your user first and foremost.

They need a site that comes on screen quickly, is clear and contains enough information so that they know how to contact you. That demonstrates your expertise in the area without giving so much information that they feel overwhelmed.

Getting read

However getting the website right is only half of the battle! How do you make sure that your website is being read by people and that they know about your firm’s existence? Search engines are key in making sure that your website is reaching the people that you want to target. Sites such as Yahoo, Google, Bing all use slightly different methods to decide how a website gets to the top of a search. You can pay to be top of the search by being a sponsor but this can get expensive.

One of the key things to do is to get the company that writes your website to consider something called “metadata” which is words that are picked up by the search engines in deciding if your site has relevant information for the user. So what key words should you include to sum up your business? Probate, Wills, Powers of Attorney and Estate Planning maybe just a few for you to consider. These words are likely to appear on the face of the website but they should also be put into the meta data file so that the search engines will pick up your site as being likely to provide the right answer to the searcher’s question.

However you will not be the only person to have done this so how else can you make your site stand out?

Using links

Using links to other sites is another way to increase your site’s ratings so that you will be higher up the table when a search is done. It is however important that you consider the right sort of links. A link to your facebook page is not recommended as this is really more of a social networking site than a business tool. It is however worth being careful if you do have a facebook page not to comment there on other businesses or people as your comments may well be read by a potential business contact and may cost you business.

All of a Twitter

The sites to link to for business are Linked In and Twitter.

You may question the suggestion of Twitter or wonder why it is relevant when you hear of people ‘tweeting’ on things like what they had for breakfast etc but there is a more serious side to it. You can comment on things like the news to show your intelligence, and how up to date you are with current affairs. You can use the site to seek an answer to a query. There is a lot of very key information being traded online in a very positive way just using a Twitter account.

Think too of your audience, many younger people associate e-mail with authority and a twitter account is seen as less formal and can be more influential so you do not only need to appeal to your clients of today but also the to clients of tomorrow.

Details of how to set up a Twitter and a Linked In account to follow in the next article.

Meanwhile, if you need some help getting your website ratings improved contact us